In an article published at CBC News on Friday, Natalie Stechyson writes the following:

some employers in both the private and public sector are mandating that many workers have to come back full time. 

As a growing number of Canadians once again find themselves cramming public transit and clogging highways to get to their workplaces, you might be wondering: is remote work gone for good?

“It’s very hard to see employees winning this particular battle, because the leverage really belongs to the employer,” said Opeyemi Akanbi, an assistant professor in communications at Toronto Metropolitan University’s Creative School who studies work culture.

She said that while it was considered an employee’s market during the pandemic — where workers were in demand and had more power — it has recently swung the other way. In July, for instance, the Canadian economy lost more than 40,000 jobs, according to Statistics Canada.

“Employees are going to have to be policy-takers instead of policy-makers,” Akanbi said.

These remarks suggest that in-person participation in one’s workplace is an importantly contested labour issue which increasingly works to the benefit of employers rather than employees. When I read the article, I immediately thought of the, uh, propaganda that surrounds in-person-only philosophy conferences, according to which most philosophers purportedly prefer them over online and hybrid conferences, that they enable forms of sociability and togetherness that are essential for the practice of doing philosophy, and that thus their reduction and even disappearance is tantamount to the destruction of philosophy.

Since early in the pandemic, this propaganda has repeatedly clashed in philosophy with attempts by me and other disabled philosophers (among other groups) to highlight the virtues of online (and, to a lesser degree, hybrid) conferences, especially their democratization of philosophy: they generate conference spaces that are more accessible to disabled philosophers and expand our opportunities to participate in them; they invite the participation of philosophers with limited or no travel funds or other financial priorities and responsibilities; they assure safe and nondisruptive participation for philosophers who live outside of North America and in particular outside of the US; they afford flexibility to philosophers with familial and community responsibilities that preclude extended travel and time away from home; and so on. Crucially, moreover, online philosophy conferences, by their very nature, enable philosophers to congregate without the requirement of air travel (i.e., without contributing to climate change) which is a political and moral imperative to an increasing number of us.

In a recent post, I pointed out that the Public Philosophy Network, which has in the past repeatedly organized in-person-only conferences will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, thereby failing to appreciate their exclusionary nature and opposition to them. Other “progressive” philosophy associations have similarly carried the torch for in-person-only conferences, including various American SWIPs, the APA, and FEAST.

Each of the aforementioned organizations has, in its own ways, parroted the apparently well-established sentiment that in-person conferences are preferred by the majority of philosophers. As you may have recognized, nevertheless, if one conceives philosophy conferences as extensions of one’s workplace, that is, as one’s workplace extended to a context in which one’s work is not usually done, this sort of claim seems to run directly counter to what the article and the empirical studies that it cites indicate; that is, if philosophy conferences are extensions of one’s employment in another context, how should we regard claims about philosophers’ preferences for in-person conferences in light of data that the article provides? In particular, consider the information provided in this sentence of the article:

July survey data from the Angus Reid Institute suggests three in five Canadians would prefer to work mostly from home, the majority would prefer a schedule that allows for some remote work and half of those who were ordered back to the office more days a week weren’t happy about it.

The article that I cite above itemizes other benefits of online work practices that, as noted, I and others have repeatedly pointed out in philosophy forums. Furthermore, the cherished success of five editions of Philosophy, Disability and Social Change conferences testifies to the value and importance of online conferences for disabled and other minoritized philosophers. Hence I was both surprised and disappointed when I saw that CSWIP has rehashed arguments that privilege in-person conferences in a document associated with a recent initiative that promises to offer advice about border-crossings to and from the US. To be sure, the linked document does acknowledge some “advantages” of online and hybrid conferences but these ostensible priorities are overshadowed by the praise that is implicitly and explicitly conferred upon in-person meetings with these spurious and contestable claims:

…there are also disadvantages.  In particular the move to virtual has reduced the serendipitous opportunities to meet new people in informal settings, to network with others over a coffee or a drink, and honestly, to make new friends in the profession. These disadvantages disproportionately affect junior and adjunct faculty who may not already have established networks.  These disadvantages will continue even after the pandemic is under control, especially if the APA decides to do ⅔ of its annual conferences online.

I was somewhat shocked that, among other reasons, signatories to the linked document ignored the growing evidence that the face-to-face and informal interactions which in-person conferences inevitably require make these conferences oppressive and generally disadvantageous to many disabled philosophers who by and large feel unwelcome at them. In addition, some of my surprise about CSWIP’s involvement in this project derived from the fact that, historically, the organization has been unable to properly manage its own bespoke website with adequate and up-to-date information for the benefit of its own (paying) membership. Indeed, even as a rather disgruntled past member/current non-member, I felt compelled to contact the “Accessibility Liaison” for CSWIP to ask whether the promotion of in-person conferences in this way undermined the work of the organization’s Accessibility Committee; I was prevented from doing so, however, because the link on the CSWIP website associated with this role took me to an unrelated webpage as did other links for “current” executive members of the association.

That a fledgling CSWIP would collaborate on a project initiated for the distinct benefit of American philosophers, or rather, nondisabled American philosophers in particular–as widely reported, fewer and fewer Canadians are travelling to the US these days–also seemed odd. When, however, members of CSWIP circulated a CFP for the next in-person-only CSWIP conference at the University of Waterloo, a conference to be co-organized with the North American Society for Social Philosophy–which itself regularly organizes in-person (i.e., inaccessible) conferences–the mystery seemed to be solved; for it became clearer to me that CSWIP now seems to work primarily to advance the interests and preferences of this very group of nondisabled American philosophers. Once again, then, we should attend to academic imperialism that masquerades as progressive cosmopolitanism.